Numbers Can Wait

We all know that I love to quote myself.  So here goes:

When we're being honest and thoughtful, all conversations about re-opening anything are conversations about how many lives we're willing to sacrifice to achieve the opening goal... How many lives are we willing to sacrifice in order to have some semblance of school?

We've found the number, I think.  It's a simple number, but getting it was pretty bizarre.  When I plugged in early this morning, the aggregators were full of a startling claim put forward in Twitter and Reddit, two highly reliable news sources:  

Betsy DeVos says that "only" 0.02% of children will probably die as a result of schools re-opening.

I spent all day, on and off, trying to find the source of this unbelievable faux pas.  It showed up in a number of more reliable journals, including one for librarians, but Twitter and Reddit were always cited as the source.  Finally, I found an explainer, and it turns out that, in an apparently dreadful interview, Secretary of Education DeVos did not say that, but instead, insisted that all public schools reopen full-time in September, without answering any questions about how, or how schools should integrate CDC recommendations. 

A couple days earlier, at a briefing involving DeVos, Dr. Deborah Birx and VP Mike Pence, Birx said (after DeVos had repeated her insistence that all schools open full time), "...most children probably won't die.  Maybe 0.1%" 

Well.  That's a lot more than 0.02%.  How much is that?  Well, it's not clear whether Birx meant 0.1% of all school children, or just 0.1% of children who contracted the disease.  

So here's the number that represents 0.1% of the 56.6 million children who will attend elementary, middle and high school this year:

56,600.

But wait - maybe it's just 0.1% of the children who contract the virus.  Since we have no idea of what that number is, let's make one up!  Some states are reporting a 33% positivity rate; it's much lower in other states.  Let's say - 10%.  Does that sound right?

5,600.

But wait!  Was Birx assuming that schools would take a look at the CDC guidance for opening schools? One would guess that this would be the case, given that she's the Task Force's Coronavirus Response Coordinator and a medical doctor, specializing in immunology, vaccine research and global health.  If they did, of course, they would not open full-time, because that would make social distancing impossible.

But Secretary DeVos has been insisting that when schools open in September (or, actually, in August in many states), that students go full time.  No social distancing.

What's the number then?

Is it getting a bit ridiculously macabre?  One, as a number representing children who die because we opened school too soon, or not wisely, is way to big.

This list of things we don't know about children and coronavirus is extensive, and includes all the important stuff.  Numbers can wait.  The new world will depend a whole very lot on whether we get this right.